


Torn & Mended

by PuzzleDragon



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-29 15:33:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15076220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuzzleDragon/pseuds/PuzzleDragon
Summary: Phillip has seen Anne exhausted and bruised after long days of intense rehearsal more times than he can remember. By now, he's used to the scuffs and scrapes that come with the circus and has a few of his own to show for it. But seeing the blood smeared across Anne's hands is so much worse somehow.





	Torn & Mended

**Author's Note:**

> Finally got around to writing another fic about these two! This one is set sometime after the end of the film, maybe a few months after they've relocated the circus. Also, here's a quick content warning for a few quick descriptions of blood and minor hand injuries. It's nothing too graphic, but it is aerial-based hurt/comfort fic, so just be aware of that. Enjoy!

During rehearsal, Anne is always completely focused. Even without her full costume, she soars through the air with all the grace and beauty she exudes during a normal performance. Phillip stands far below, spotting her as she contorts herself into one flawless pose after another, never faltering as she moves around her hoop.

She dangles weightlessly for a moment, one straight arm anchoring her in place while the curve of the hoop presses against her back and nestles between her neck and shoulder. She points her toes as if it's second nature to her while she turns in slow, controlled circles high above him. She makes it look effortless, reaching up with her extended arm and wrapping her fingers around the metal arc above her to transition into her next pose. But as she swings her legs back up into the hoop—a maneuver Phillip’s seen her accomplish hundreds of times before—her hand slips out from under her.

She was already reaching up with her other arm, the one outstretched as counterbalance, but as her anchored hand shifts against the metal below her, her raised hand instinctively grasps tightly onto the top of the hoop. Even from his place on the ground Phillip can see her face contort in pain as she catches herself.

“Lower me down,” Anne calls down to him urgently, unclenching both of her hands once her legs are securely crossed over the hoop.

Phillip is in motion as soon as the words leave her mouth, rushing over to the rigging behind the stands. With her feet and head on one side of the hoop to offset the weight of her hips on the other, Phillip knows Anne well enough to know that she’s perfectly secure in what others might assume is a precarious position. With her knees bent and her head tilted, the hoop cradles her. He knows she won't fall, but that logic part of his brain can't stop his pulse from pounding in his ears as he works to get her down. Phillip watches her relax her arms to maintain her balance and as he lowers her safely toward the sawdust he finally catches a glimpse of her hands. His heart stops.

Her palms are smeared with blood.

“What happened up there?” he calls out. He quickly ties off the rope once she's reached her usual dismount height and steps back into the ring to return to her side.

“I’m fine,” she protests, still sitting in her hoop. She tries to wave him back but the gesture only draws attention to her battered hands. She curls her fingers in to hide the injury from him, but the movement apparently only brings more pain along with it as he sees her grit her teeth in response.

Phillip moves closer as Anne continues to spin in slow circles several feet above the ground. He’s seen her untangle herself from far more complicated poses countless times before, but now she makes no attempt to anchor her hands or lift her hips or slide her feet toward the ground. She just dangles there like a suspended rag doll.

“Can you lift yourself out of that pose?” he asks, “Or do you need me to carry you?”

She reaches up to the top of her hoop and attempts to shift her weight back into it, but when she wraps her hands around the metal, she flinches and lets go again. 

“I can’t get a good enough grip,” she admits with a sigh. “Can you just lift me out and set me down?”

“Of course.” He steps closer and bends down so she can reach out to him.

She wraps her arms around his neck and crosses her wrists behind his head, careful not to press her injured palms against his shoulders. With the added stability he provides her, Anne arches her back and shifts her legs just enough so that Phillip can slip one arm underneath her knees and the other behind her back. He lifts her out of the rig without much effort—he's stronger now than he was when he first ran away with the circus and this isn't the first time he's had to carry her—and holds her close to his chest as he does. 

She rests her head against his shoulder, the gesture second nature to her now, and presses a kiss to the underside of his jaw in thanks for his help. Everywhere her skin touches his he can feel the heat radiating off of her and he breathes in the scent of sweat and sawdust and all the things that mark the circus as an essential part of her. The weight of her in his arms has become familiar since they became a couple, and if she wasn't injured, he might just hold her like this forever.

“My hands are hurt, but my feet are just fine,” she teases, still nuzzling into him, “You can put me down now.”

Instead of placing her on her feet there in the middle of the ring, he walks over to the stands with her still in his arms. She doesn’t protest.

Once she’s settled herself on one of the wooden benches, he kneels down in front of her.

“Let me see them,” Phillip says, reaching out for her hands.

“I’m fine,” Anne insists, closing her hands to hide the blood from him, but when her fingertips press against her palms, she flinches again.

“You’re clearly not,” he retorts, the edge in his voice betrayed by how gently he clasps her cotton-wrapped wrists in his hands and turns her clenched fists over. “Just let me help, please,” he adds, this tone softening as he looks into her eyes.

She doesn't like to admit when she's hurting, he knows that, but when he looks at her with so much love and concern, his simple “please” breaks her tense resolve instantly. He sees the same affection mirrored in Anne's face as her defensive pride crumbles. She slowly uncurls her fingers to reveal her upturned palms to him.

There’s not as much blood as he'd initially feared from the one quick glimpse he'd gotten before, but the unstained skin around it doesn't look much better. He’s seen her overwork herself before—has helped her ice bruises and rope burn on multiple occasions—and he knows that the redness will fade in a few hours, but the tears in her skin are what really worry him. On both her hands, just below her outstretched fingers, patches of the usually tough and hardened skin of her palms have been rubbed away leaving her hands raw.

“What happened up there?” he finally asks, wrenching his gaze away from her injuries.

“I tore my calluses,” she answers with a shrug.

“I thought your skin was too thick for that.” He knows she's been training for years and he'd just assumed that the rips and blisters he's seen on some of the newer acrobats just stopped happening over time. 

“No, my hands are tough but they’re not indestructible. I was working too hard up there, didn't notice how much strain I was putting on my hands... or how much I was sweating." She laughs lightly at her own misjudgment and the sound manages to ease some of Phillip's anxiety. "Sweat makes my skin softer," she continues, "and it made me lose my grip on the hoop. So when this hand slipped and I over-gripped with the other, well...” Anne flexes her fingers to illustrate the outcome of her story, as the ending is clearly written across her palms.

“What do you need? How can I help?” Phillip asks.

“Get me some water and a clean cloth? I should wash the tears before I do anything else.”

He exits the tent with a nod and when he returns with the supplies from the basic medical kit the trope keeps nearby for performance mishaps, he finds her still sitting in the same place, carefully unwrapping the pink fabric from around her wrists. He settles down beside her, straddling the bench so he can face her more fully, and extends the cloth and bowl of water he's brought with him.

“May I?” he asks.

She nods with a soft smile. He gently lifts one of her hands in his and begins wiping away the blood. After so many months of desperate pining—on both his side and hers—he loves that he can show her this kind of care and affection now, that she trusts him enough to be let her guard down like this and be vulnerable in front of him. She directs his hands as he tends to her wounds, the soothing tone of her voice telling him where to apply more pressure and which areas to avoid. They work together in perfect harmony, her words guiding his hands across her own, and when they’ve finished, Phillip sets the blood-stained cloth aside. He presses a soft kiss against the heel of each palm, careful not to touch the torn parts of her hands. She laughs lightly at his sentimental gesture and smiles at him as he lowers their clasped hands to rest between the two of them again.

“Can you still perform tonight?” he asks, his thumbs tracing gentle circles across her bare wrists.

“A little thing like this isn’t going to keep me from flying.” She grins at him. 

“I just want you to be safe," he adds, knowing that even if he wanted to keep Anne on the ground, there was no way to convince her to stay off the trapeze once she'd made up her mind to perform, "Or at least as safe as a world-class aerialist can be when she's forty feet in the air every night." 

“I’ll be fine,” she presses a quick kiss to his cheek, “I’ll need to wrap my hands tonight, and maybe for the next couple of nights after that. And I probably shouldn’t get up there outside of performances for a week or so, just to give my hands time to rest and recover. But you know me, I’m tough. I’ll heal up quick enough, and once I do, I’ll build up my calluses again, just like I've done every other time this has happened in my life. There is no need to worry about me.”

“Just because I know you can handle yourself, doesn’t mean I don't still worry about you sometimes."

“Which is unnecessary, but endearing,” she teases, pulling her legs up under herself on the bench and turning her body to face him.

“I'll take that as a compliment,” he responds, his voice low.

"You should," she whispers back, moving closer.

He lets go of her wrists then and grazes her arms with his thumbs as he moves to settle his hands on her hips instead. She leans forward, draping her arms over his shoulders and closing the distance between them. She presses her lips to his and he kisses her in return, slow and sweet. He can taste the hint of salt left behind on her skin from the exertion of her rehearsal and he can feel the warmth of her body through her red and tan practice leotard. Kissing her has always felt like coming home and stumbling into the unknown at the same time. Her touch has become more familiar overtime, but each new intimacy between them brings a newfound joy and passion as bright and surprising as the first time they kissed. Even now, sitting together at the edge of the ring as the distant daily noise of the rest of the circus drifts in and out of the tent, he melts into her touch and grips her hips more firmly. He’s half-intent on kissing her senseless for the rest of the afternoon—that evening’s show be damned—but a moment later she draws in a sharp breath and pulls away from him.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, immediately loosening his hold on her and pulling back to look in her dark eyes. “Was that too much? Was I moving too fast or—”

“No, _no_ , nothing like that," she reassures him quickly, "I was the one moving too fast." She carefully removes her hand from where it was curled around the back of his neck. “Holding on to anything is going to hurt for the next hour or two, and _you_ are no exception. But when you kiss me like that, I sometimes forget my own common sense.”

He smirks at her. “Am I really that good?”

“Don’t let it go to your head, Carlyle.”

“I would  _never_ ,” he jokes, pressing another quick kiss to her lips.

“I should probably go get cleaned up, though," she adds after he pulls back again, "We’ve only got a few more hours left until we open to the public.” As she rises to her feet, she glances down at her torn hands again. “Bandages are going to look terrible under the spotlights, but my hands will hate me even more if I get back up in the air without covering them up first.”

“I care more about you taking care of yourself than I do about your recovery looking fashionable under the stage lights,” he replies, following her out of the main tent.

“I know, I know. But when I’m in front of an audience, you know I like to look my best. And we both know that my costume wasn’t designed with bandages in mind as accents.”

“Nothing could make you anything less than beautiful up there.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, Carlyle, but if you keep sweet-talking me like that neither of us is going to be ready on time for tonight’s show.”

She manages to make an admonishment also sound like the most enticing offer he’s heard all day, but he knows she’s right. As much as he wants to follow her back to her trailer and kiss her breathless, safely hidden away from the prying eyes of an audience or the rest of the circus trope, they’re still professionals with a spectacle to put on later that night. He vows to himself to make sure to kiss her properly during the finale instead.

After that exchange and one more quick goodbye kiss, they part ways, off to prepare for the performance. 

Later that night, in front of one of the dressing room mirrors, Anne resigns herself to the stark contrast of pale bandages against dark skin and bright satin. But when she sits down at her vanity to apply her stage makeup, she finds another small stack of clean bandages waiting for her there.

She doesn't know how Phillip managed to pull it off in such a short amount of time, but each one is dyed the exact same cotton-candy pink as her wrist wraps.

A small note sits on top of the fabric, and even without his signature attached to it, she could recognize Phillip’s handwriting anywhere:

_“Thought you might appreciate something a bit more colorful for the show. Take care of yourself, love.”_

It's not Anne's easiest performance by any stretch of the imagination, but despite the stinging in her palms as she soars above the crowd, she can’t help but smile every time she catches sight of the pink cloth wrapped around her hands.


End file.
